Drying off........

In yesterday's blip I wrote about our cows being dried off for the winter. Today was the day that it was all going to happen. The cows were milked for the last time this season at 6am this morning following which they were put in their paddock from last night while we had breakfast. After breakfast, the cows begrudgingly went back into the cowshed, where each cow's teat was 'injected' with a tube of dry cow therapy. This is a intramammary antibiotic treatment that is necessary to prevent new udder infections in the dry period. As you can imagine, inserting this into each teat is a slow process - it took us two and a half hours to treat all our cows.

The above picture shows a tube of the dry cow therapy being inserted into a teat of a cow. Before this is done, each teat has to be cleaned with an alcohol wipe - this helps prevent dirt being inserted into the teat, and causing an infection in the udder.

After the cows were treated, they are put into a paddock with a little grass and a lot of hay. Cows don't produce milk when you feed them hay - so when it is fed to them, the cow's brain sends a message to stop producing milk, and the udder will eventually dry up. So, the cows are now officially on holiday - and we don't have to get up super early to milk them - hurray!

It is nice to have the sun back today, after a very slight frost. Only a few more days before winter is officially here - now there's a sad thought!